KEEPING PUBLIC SCHOOLS UNSAFE, AND INCAPABLE OF EDUCATING STUDENTS

Four years ago, then-President Obama issued a letter informing public schools that students should be disciplined for a variety of offenses, from minor (tardiness) to major (disruption, even physical disruption of class) in proportion to the racial makeup of the student population.

Translated into plain English, if Black students are more prone to these offenses, find a way to bring their numbers back to where non-Black students are.

Well, there are two ways to do this; either ignore offenses by Black students, or invent offenses for non-Black students that don’t exist.

Ignoring offenses by Black students is the easier of the two, and that is what has been done by many schools since the letter was sent.

Let’s stop a moment and think about this.

If Black students’ statistics are higher than non-Blacks because they are being singled out by race, it is an outrage. Overt racism. It has to be stopped immediately and the people doing it have to be held to account.

If Black students’ statistics are higher than non-Blacks because, as a group, more Black students commit these offenses, then it is not a a racist outrage. By contrast, the letter which instructs schools to apportion discipline by race instead of what is actually happening in those schools is overt racism.

And, if that is not bad enough, the fact that it results in unruly, disruptive “students” (does that word even fit?) in classrooms (when they feel like showing up), means not only are teachers less able to teach – maybe unable to teach at all – but lin constant fear of violent repercussions if they dare to try and prevent the disruptions from taking place.

Can anyone tell me who this helps? Which skin color benefits? Why it doesn’t hurt students who want to learn, regardless of their skin color?

Well, the DOJ has come out in support of rescinding this racist directive.

But the Department of Education? Not so fast. It says “We’ll do it later, after we come up with something different — which, given the Department of Education’s history, means the same crap, packaged in a different toilet bowl.

That leads to a series of interesting questions: isn’t Betsy DeVos Secretary of Education? Wasn’t she appointed by Donald Trump? Can’t she rescind this directive? And if so, what the hell is she waiting for?

When Ms. DeVos was appointed it was the left who was outraged, calling her an incompetent.

Maybe, for very different reasons than her critics actually had in mind, they had a point.